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Costa Rica's progress in developing a national land use, land cover and ecosystems monitoring system

The Republic of Costa Rica is a Central American country largely covered by tropical forest that exhibits high biodiversity. The country has made many efforts to conserve its forests and biodiversity, although in most cases forest and agricultural resources have been independently assessed. Nevertheless, the interdependence of forest, biodiversity and agricultural resources has highlighted the need to develop a monitoring system that would allow consistent, integrated and comprehensive monitoring of all of these resources.

Since 2015, following a Ministerial Directive (DM-417-2015), the Government of Costa Rica has been developing a national system for monitoring land cover, land use and ecosystems (SIMOCUTE: Sistema Nacional de Monitoreo de la Cobertura y Uso de la Tierra y Ecosistemas) consisting of several integrated subsystems. SIMOCUTE constitutes the official platform for the integration and management of environmental data and information at national scale.

The case study reports on how the country is strengthening national capacities to monitor natural, agricultural and biodiversity resources to support decision-making and increase the ambition and effectiveness of climate actions.